Monday, January 18

The Geopolitics of 2016: Oil, War, Chaos and Pathological Altruism.

Word on the ground at the Pentagon is that the Obama Administration's foreign policy is viewed as so inept, directionless and without clear objective that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have had to step in behind the scenes and offer tacit assistance to Assad in Syria to help him shore up his defensive line before the whole Middle East goes to shit. Based on pragmatism alone, any combat theater that puts US, French, UK, Turkish, Israeli, Syrian and Russian combat aircraft together in the same war fighting environment demands from an Administration, at the very least, delicacy and tact, but even more importantly, leadership and craft. The current US Administration's policy on Syria exhibits none of these qualities to its allies, but far worse than this, it exhibits none of these qualities to its enemies.

War will always be the extension of politics by other means.

That's why every time Obama deploys one of his cloned spokeswomen wearing the "problem glasses" to a White House press briefing, I cringe as they tell Russia how very concerned the Administration is with all that nasty interventional bombing stuff going on in Syria. Putin and his cronies must be playing that drinking game in the Kremlin where you have to take a vodka shot every time the problem chick says trigger words like "counterproductive" or "indiscriminate bombing" and you must double shot when the term "civilian casualties" gets used. The truth is, US foreign policy is chaos and reeks of hypocrisy and the rest of the world knows it. And its presentation is even worse. Say what you will about the tenets of Bush-era neocon aggression and naked Cheney Halliburton rapine, but at least it was an ethos dude.

And this very lack of a coherent American foreign policy over the last two years is having all kinds of unintended consequences across the globe. When the Russians took what could be taken (Crimea) in what in hindsight remains a brilliant strategic maneuver – bloodless – (well, you know what I mean, a few people burned to death here, some more maimed and vaporized there) but in the grand scheme of things the Crimean annexation was something any general in any time would call a cheap victory. Either way, NATO was caught flat-footed, responded only after much chin scratching and imposed its sanctions rather limply at first, making attempts to freeze up all that sleazy Russian oligarch money in foreign banks. When that didn't hurt enough, the US turned on the fracking spigot, squeezing once-dead wells into gushers and suddenly the US became the world's largest oil producer again. Along with Canadian shale oil, 'they' flooded the US market with so much cheap crude that every Texan with a Hummer or Escalade to feed began praising Jesus before ordering a hooker.

Oil's precipitous decline on world markets during 2015 was a marvel to watch.

If only it was cooking oil, I could've made more popcorn.

The whole Russian economy is a one trick pony that needs $110 a barrel oil as a base price just to keep up Moscow's balance of payments. Putin's drinking game crashed up against a raging hangover when Russia went into recession and the ruble began to shed value as oil plummeted. That's how wars begin of course. They slow boil for years and are waged economically first before any shooting starts. But who's going to start a shooting war in a post-nuclear world with Russia? Still, it's worth remembering Japan had been under a US oil embargo for years before they 'suddenly' attacked Pearl Harbor in '41.

Low oil prices have had all kinds of domino effects that complicate the global chessboard.

For one thing, Saudi Aramco (basically the House of Saud's personal corporation) and the largest company on earth with yearly earnings three times that of the GDP of the UK, does not particularly like low oil prices either. Go figure. Just like Russia, they too like it when oil prices are in the hundred dollar a barrel range because a new Ferrari a week per obscure Saudi prince is seen as a divine right and cheap oil tends to make the royals skimp on the options package. Also, the Wahhabi ruling class in Saudi Arabia need a constant stream of cash to buy off their captive population of restless sex-starved street racing youth who, without regular pay offs, might get all romantic and rebellious and wonder if ISIS could help them revolt and get their hands on all those sweet sweet spice exporting terminals the princes own and grab all of that for themselves. Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice is always a temptation for revolt as is access to 72 virgins but in this life before you die. Due to the crash in oil prices, the ruling Saudi royals are having to dip into their savings accounts. Deep though they may be, paying off their population with the usual stream of benefits does not come cheap because no matter how you cut it, you can behead only so many people before your Bastille gets stormed.

In chaos and war, it always comes down to the money. But more on oil prices later.

One major interesting Obama Administration foreign policy maneuver in 2015 was the nuclear deal signed with Iran. Now that was popcorn-worthy. It was worth it just to watch the Israelis squirm. The Zionists are so used to running American foreign policy for their own benefit and having the US Army take care of their enemies for them (Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad etc) that it was hilarious to watch Netanyahu throw a shit fit in the US Congress against the Iranian deal. It was so tasty to watch that I bought some kosher popcorn, sprinkled it with bacon fat and almost put it in the blender so I could drink it through a straw like a freedom smoothie. Standing up to AIPAC and the Zionist lobby is the single jewel I can admire in the Obama Administration's non illustrious crown. As to the grand chessboard of the Middle East, it's now hard to see Israel making a move on Natanz or the other Iranian nuclear facilities. Not only because of their lack of long range refueling tankers and need for US logistic support, but mainly because the worldwide blowback that would ensue would be a PR shit storm too much even for the Israelis to endure.

This is popcorn. It is tasty. Eat some.

As to Syria, as I've written before, it is just the current year in the wider Sunni v Shia regional proxy war. But here's the fun part. With sanctions about to be lifted on Iran, that means their oil can come to market. The Iranians, in need of hard foreign currency, will begin pumping immediately. Right now, the Saudis have continued pumping oil despite the low price, not just because they can, but because they want to punish US and Canadian shale oil producers who desperately need high oil prices to function simply due to their high costs of extraction. Saudi Aramco would very much like these competitors knocked out of business, workers laid off and all investments in energy self-sufficiency go belly up before the Sheikhs turn down the flow rate on the spigot. Oil is a dirty business because the profits are so huge and men will kill and die for it. Yet the sleazy template always remains the same. First neutralize the competition because the Saudis can pump cheap. Next, let all those bloated storage terminals and offshore tankers unload the glut of contango oil to Gulf refineries. Pump nothing. Wait for prices to climb steadily as shortage inflates prices just before the summer driving season. Hey presto, a Saudi prince just earned himself a new Ferrari because he woke up in the morning.

This is basically the Saudi economy in a nutshell.

But here's the fun part.

This dollar harvest is going to be harder to farm now that Iran is waiting in the wings ready to pick up any slack in supply. Hungry for hard currency, the Iranians will pump for any price, killing Saudi ambitions to get back to mythical 2007 money. That is one reason why the Shia v Sunni proxy war in Syria is fought also in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and Bahrain, all of these countries being about as politically stable as a waste water containment tank at Fukushima.

It's Sunni oil versus Shia oil and most people in the West with a vehicle don't care.

The irony here is that Israel is now Saudi Arabia's new best friend. True, their interests have been aligned for years based on that old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" maxim, but still, it's interesting. Both of them have excellent US supplied air forces, overwhelming when compared to the Iranians’ Shah-era F-14s. But the latest word on the international arms market is that the Russians have cleared their long standing deal with the Iranians and will begin delivery of the promised state of the art S-300 air defense system by the end of 2016. This would make any attack on Iranian facilities by air orders of magnitude more costly to any aggressor outside of stealth aircraft. And even then, who knows? The Serbs shot down a stealth fighter during the Kosovo war back in the ‘90s and gave the wreckage to the Chinese whose embassy in Belgrade got 'accidentally bombed' by the US days later. Still, you can make a safe bet that if some NATO anti-tank weaponry just happened to fall off the back of a truck in Eastern Ukraine any time soon, then I'd bet that Iran would have a Russian S-300 anti-aircraft dome deployed over Tehran the very next day.

The chessboard in 2016 is complicated my friends.

No discussion of the price of oil and US foreign policy would be complete without mentioning the dollar or, more precisely, the petrodollar. Yeah, I know, every guy on the Internet has a Ph.D in this theory but, if all oil must be bought in dollars then this artificial demand for dollars means that, from Russia and China's point of view, they are indirectly funding America's foreign wars every time they buy or sell a barrel of crude. Putin has signaled he wants to create an oil index and buy oil in rubles. Sure, it’s a farfetched idea right now considering the ruble makes up only about one percent of the FOREX market but it is also the kind of idea that can get you killed, or start a war, just ask Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi... oh wait.

They already tried it and they're dead.

Europeans can and should rightly lay some blame at the door of the Obama Administration for its current influx woes. Buying oil in dollars means that European nations are indirectly paying for the very US machinations in Syria that have flooded their own countries with a million ‘refugees’ in a single year. The Obama Administration's total ineptitude when it came to handling post-war Iraq, leaving the field by some arbitrary date as a campaign promise just to woo the young Starbucks-drinking urban hipster vote left a power vacuum in Iraq into which ISIS flowed. Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff were mind-blown by the stupidity. Sure, the Bush neocons broke the vase and did all the damage in the first place, but walking away and leaving the pieces broken was as short-sighted as it was politically expedient for re-election purposes.

As Churchill liked to say, "The greatest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

Now, after the atrocities, the burnings in cages, the medieval barbarity on the nightly news, this same Administration wants to go after the last dictator left in the Middle East, Assad, the last man standing, he who is holding back the tide. Say what you will about Gaddafi or Hussein. They were dictators, killers and brutal, but you have to be brutal in tribal lands just to keep order. Factional desert people just don't do voting booths and a polite letter to their Congressman. Arabian concepts of grievance are that when there's a problem they grab an AK and march their way towards the problem until the problem owns a tank and then they shut the fuck up and go home.

Tribal politics are based on power and this economy of power has existed in Arabia for a thousand years. That power trickles down from a leader in a hierarchal pyramid much like the one printed on the back of every dollar bill. The West, terrified by the upheaval brought about by the ‘Arab Spring’ sided with the mob and those at the bottom of the pyramid in the name of ‘democracy’.

Yeah, I don't swallow that one either, but it's what they printed in the newspapers and said on TV so it must be true. Right?

Either way, with the tacit and logistic support of the US, the French and British air forces took out Gaddafi's armor and military infrastructure and now there's a boat leaving from the Libyan coast to Europe every day just like Gaddafi had warned; boats and rafts filled with the dregs of humanity from backward shit holes like Eritrea, Yemen, Somalia; places so far removed from any concept of European civilization that it boggles the mind that these people show up as refugees in cities from Cologne to Stockholm and have to be given classes on how not to rape women in skirts because Europe, contrary to their belief system, is not an ongoing live action roleplaying porno movie.

Miss us yet?

The hordes pouring out of Syria are unwelcome in every other Middle Eastern country outside of Jordan because even their fellow Arabs do not want them around and see fractious Syrian ethnic Druze, Alawites, Sunni Arabs, Turkmen etc as a destabilizing force. The Israelis on the Syrian border accept zero refugees. Funny how Zionists promote multiculturalism in every country except their own. Funny too how over 80% of the migrants are military aged men and a million alone entered Europe in 2015 with a million more to come in 2016. The Battle of Vienna was fought in 1683 at the gates of Western Civilization to keep out the Ottoman Turks. This current migrant crisis is not immigration; it's a fucking invasion. How many of these men are veteran militia fighters, cells waiting to be activated to wage the same war they've fought in Damascus and Dara'a on the streets of Cologne, London or Stockholm?

Or like Paris recently, link up with their homegrown brethren for more asymmetrical warfare.

European citizenry, or at the very least the officials they elect, are suffering from some kind of post WWII abhorrence to violence that borders on self destruction. Decades of plenty has given rise to a pathological altruism among European populations that would shock their world conquering ancestors. WWII has left such an indelible mark on the mainland European psyche and created a mythical egalitarianism where populations believe every foe can be defeated if only you just love them enough. It's like Jesus on steroids except they're all atheists. For the Germans, they seem to have this need to prove to the world they're not Nazis anymore and think Angela Merkel can accomplish some kind of sainthood by flooding quaint German villages with peoples from foreign deserts who have no wish to assimilate, no love for their new land, worship a strange god and see everything European civilization has produced as worthless blasphemy.

Think of it this way. If one percent of the refugees entering Europe in 2015 are veteran militia fighters (a conservative number) that means 10,000 men operating behind enemy lines. No European country since the fall of Rome would have allowed foreign infiltration on this scale without conflict or confrontation. And yet today, a million people have walked into Europe and to even raise the question as to why this is so and who they are means you're a racist and a bigot. Such is the power of media driven thought control and political correctness.

This is the power of pathological altruism.

Oil funds it.

War fuels it.

Chaos enjoys it.

And so welcome to 2016.

Quite possibly the most interesting year to be alive ever so long as you've got popcorn.

97 comments:

"and now there's a boat leaving from the Libyan coast to Europe every day just like Gaddafi had warned; boats and rafts filled with the dregs of humanity from backward shit holes like Eritrea, Yemen, Somalia; places so far removed from any concept of European civilization that it boggles the mind that these people show up as refugees in cities from Cologne to Stockholm and have to be given classes on how not to rape women in skirts because Europe, contrary to their belief system, is not an ongoing live action roleplaying porno movie."

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's not so much that Putin is such an exacting and capable leader as that Muscovian politics allows for more decisive unilateralism than its Western counterparts. His image is so carefully constructed that it's more Hollywood than anything. (He goes on a diving trip in Greece and just stumbles on ancient artifacts, really?)

If he really was able to get shit done then the Russian economy would have bounced back and they would be leading the international efforts to achieve a conflict settlement in Syria.

Sure glad to see you back...thought maybe the Israelis or Our Military Industrial Complex kidnapped your, er, person off to some black site.

A disturbing reading. Bush negotiated the withdrawal of forces before Obama took office. So, would you have Obama go against both the American and Iraqi people's will and just tear up the agreement?Your description of Euro "Just love them ENOUGH" appeasement really opened my eyes.Nothing like petropolitics, the Islamic Schism mixed with the ongoing side effects of unraveled Colonialism to ensure that we live in "interesting times."

Sure glad to see you back...thought maybe the Israelis or Our Military Industrial Complex kidnapped your, er, person off to some black site.

A disturbing reading. Bush negotiated the withdrawal of forces before Obama took office. So, would you have Obama go against both the American and Iraqi people's will and just tear up the agreement?Your description of Euro "Just love them ENOUGH" appeasement really opened my eyes.Nothing like petropolitics, the Islamic Schism mixed with the ongoing side effects of unraveled Colonialism to ensure that we live in "interesting times."

You're not reading the European situation correctly. Our biggest problem is not terrorism, nor the increase in petty crime. We're on the verge of a pension system collapse because the fine folks living here didn't bother providing the state with at least 2 new tax payers per family, so we have less and less people working to pay more and more pensions.

We need those "military age males" to work for us, and we need them now. Even if by some miracle we convince rich Europeans to start popping out those stressful little critters, they won't join the work force soon enough. We need immigration for a very selfish reason.

Yes, we do. But not in the millions! And those people can neither speak our language, nor can they (most of them anyway) speak English.In order to put them to work, they need to be paid a minimum wage. For someone who has pretty much no capability at all, nobody can and wants to pay a full wage (sure sure, they all went to (koran) school and are certified whatevers, but it is not comparable to our standards ...).Because we are not allowed to pay them less than minimum wage, a lot of them are doing nothing, even if they were willing to (a lot are). After some weeks/months of doing nothing, they get bored ... and start touching a women here, stabbing someone there, you get the picture ...

I am so so disappointed in ... humanity? I don't even know who to blame. I feel overrun. I am afraid. I can't even talk to those people. They don't understand me. I feel threatened in my own country. I feel like it's too late to do anything.

Everyone has always been afraid of 'The Other' but by and large it's always worked out. Everyone just wants stability; the first generation will barely be able to assimilate and will remain Syrian or what have you but the kids will grow up speaking the language and fitting in better, identifying as, say, Syrian-Germans.

The majority of immigrants to the EU don't pay taxes they collect benefits. And even if they did work do you think what will become a majority of the military aged males will really want to pay the pensions of some wrinkly old infidels keeping some grey haired white people around as pets out of the goodness of their rapist heart. If they are so good for the economy then why are not the places they come from rich and booming, they are low IQ inbreds.

You forgot to check some hard facts: German data: about 13% are employable. (That includes menial, ditch digging jobs)Their average schooling is 5th grade level (European).20+% are simply illiterate.53% will never be employable as they are untrainable to function in a high tech country - like Germany.

Psychology: They have low IQ. They are lazy. They are aggressive and pushy - with a sense of entitlement. They are fanatically religious. They disrespect people in general, women in particular. Completely undeveloped ethics (crime prone). Low self-control combined with high sexual drive. Inability to compromise in conflict, therefore violence prone. They are hardened... Your notion looks good on paper, provided you have European type personnel to work with. Problem is, that in essence (it's an exaggeration for illustration) you imported monkeys to do people's work. For some reason you have a basic inability to distinguish between the two. Guess what: It'll NEVER work.

Well I personally welcome Islam and Sharia law. I say more refugees! More Islam! So that one day we have the numbers to finally put our insane women back under control. Christianity will not do this. Will not even talk about it, as I tried when I joined several fake Christian churches. Methodist church has a married leader fucking whores in the church and then having the minister removed when he objects. Lol Christianity.

But you know what? Islam and Sharia law will bring our insane women under control. So I say more refugees! More diversity! Until there are enough here for us to bring our insane women under control. They can breed with the winners.

Sure there will be much death and destruction. My children, whom I can not raise, will probably die. Who cares? I welcome Islam as there is nothing this 'grand' western civilization can offer me. I have prayed for it's destruction. My dreams are coming true.

Well I personally welcome Islam and Sharia law. I say more refugees! More Islam! So that one day we have the numbers to finally put our insane women back under control. Christianity will not do this. Will not even talk about it, as I tried when I joined several fake Christian churches. Methodist church has a married leader fucking whores in the church and then having the minister removed when he objects. Lol Christianity.

But you know what? Islam and Sharia law will bring our insane women under control. So I say more refugees! More diversity! Until there are enough here for us to bring our insane women under control. They can breed with the winners.

Sure there will be much death and destruction. My children, whom I can not raise, will probably die. Who cares? I welcome Islam as there is nothing this 'grand' western civilization can offer me. I have prayed for it's destruction. My dreams are coming true.

I think we should create a war tard drinking team ... our team strategy involves doing shots every time a talking head on the news says shit like "civilian casualties" im in to my 2nd bottle at the moment. Like they fukin care lol

As usual this is a great article. I would take issue with one point. Wartard seems to gloss over the impact of just how terrible the impact was for the Bush 2.0 crew to get us in Iraq in the first place. From the moment the first US boot hit the desert sand, the US being painted into a corner was complete. We lost the end of the war the moment it started. The longer we stayed there the more resentment would build up and the moment we left was the moment an ISIS/Syria scenario was bound to be inevitable. Blame it on the ineptitude of the Obama administration all you want. But that problem was set in motion long before Obama was elected and it will be there long after he leaves. There is no person who can fix this. The only leader who could have prevented this mess was Bush 2.0 but you can’t unpop the popcorn.

Yeah I thought there was an inconsistency there as well, specially since saying that they should have stayed to fix the issue, but didn't mention what the 1919 treaty did as a starting point, after that you can follow the super powers interests and their proxy wars.Saying this last battle in Iraq is the one we should have stuck with when all the others failed was the big flaw in the argument.

Good read but incorrect to say the US embargoed Japan for 'years'. The oil embargo was only in effect for 6-7 months before Pearl Harbour. Embargo went into effect on August 1 1941. Pearly Harbour was December 7th or 8th 1941 IIRC.

Fascinating stuff - great to have you back. I may have misunderstood but I disagree with the chronology and link between the US shale oil boom and Russia's annexation of Crimea. The shale-induced Hummers and hookers that you speak of were getting ridden long before Vlad flexed his muscles and grabbed Crimea and its warm-water port. US oil production began its miraculous rebirth back in circa 2009 when Mr Putin wasn't even President. No doubt that cheap oil has been an extremely convenient foreign and domestic policy tool for the US administration (which may be deliberately exacerbating the glut by surreptitiously moving crude reserves from the SPR to commercial stocks to keep the prices down - but that is different debate entirely) but taps were not turned on to spite the Russians. The oil was already flowing.

That is frequently used piece of SJW circular logic. Any source that disagrees with an SJW is an evil racist source, so therefore there is no respectable source that disagrees with an SJW. Any source that agrees with an SJW is a respectable authoritive source, so all their lies can be accepted as truth.

Are you writing off a source with your pathetic ad hominem arguments? Please show why the data may be inaccurate instead of falling back on your non-existent arguments. It would prove that you at least have passed the undergraduate level.

Waiting for your inevitable non-response. Sorry you have such a clouded mind!

Hi war tard, I have been reading you since the time of gaddafi. You sparked many good reads of war & politics since that time. I owe you that man. Glad too see a new post, but i cannot help feeling something different in style about it. A little bit cool blooded, a touch of upper stratta genuine fear of the poor coming to the suburbs. Don't forget the anarchist humour, i guess that is the heart of your articles. Thanks for all, greetings from Montevideo

ahh great to have you back man! good article, but I feel you missed a key wildcard with not mentioning the Kurds and Turkeys slow slide into civil war. Granted I'm writing this with Aleppo being steadily surrounded and the "red line" inching closer but you have to admit.. direct Turkish intervention to salvage whatever legitimacy they have left in the region suddenly doesn't sound like some fan made historical fiction.

This Turkey/Saudi ground invasion talk is scary as fuck. It has 1914 system of alliances written all over it. Unfortunately, I am dealing with a major illness in the family right now and cannot write as much as I could but I will try to get in some paragraphs in the next few days.

I enjoy reading your blogs WT. They are informative and entertaining. This latest one contains a sort of a lazy intellectualism that is becoming more rife regarding the "refugee" crisis. I am an Afghan Canadian, I now have two cousins (military aged males) in Germany. They are migrants in the sense that they are not escaping war, rather they are looking for more opportunity. They are not solely economic migrants, they are also seeking to live freer lives and to explore their lives and minds as human beings in a more liberal environment. They would like nothing more than to have their families to join them and for their brothers and sisters to enjoy those same freedoms. They are certainly not invaders in any sense of the word. I was surprised to read your analysis here fall into this lazy trap of white supermacism disguised as nativism (which I can respect).

Isn't that a definition of economic migrant tho? Do you and they not come to the west to improve your lot in life?

Isn't the real laziness here the fact that you flee the problems in your homeland in order to have an easier life in the west? Why not stay in your part of the world and fix the problems in your country rather than running away and bringing your problems for us to fix.Isn't that the real laziness?

Would love to hear your thoughts on the increasingly unstable Sahel region. The West is struggling to contain a fundamentalist insurgency in a relatively small chunk of land in Iraq/Sryia. Something similar is in the offing in a lawless area that nearly spans the width of Africa

Distressing, Excited as I was to find new piece by Wartard I am upset to see it naked, without the rigorous analysis I have come to expect. Instead the piece is a drunk uncle worthy drawl of conspiracy oriented fear mongering. Focused on short term hand wringing "scary numbers," And without the long view clever conclusions I used to find here.

I don't know if you have just been going through some stuff or finally did the smart thing and cashed out your online persona to the paid for global information hivemind, but I hope we can get back to old standard soon.

What's been happening in Europe is the result of bombing Iraq with democracy before leaving it and saying, "non of my business." Yet, the west doesn't seem to have learned its lesson and wants Assad removed with force creating chaos and the current situation.

So here we are July 8. The rule of law is basically dead in the united states and the UK got the balls to leave the EU. I'd like to predict that the altruism spigot may be getting ready to be shut off.

"And so welcome to 2016. Quite possibly the most interesting year to be alive ever so long as you've got popcorn." Maaaaan. That was some industrial strength Chinese curse. I hope you ordered a container-sized popcorn bag for this year :)

Surely the geopolitics have changed now that the right has gained ascendancy after Brexit and Trump. You predicted it indirectly in this year old post. Syria policy brought down Clinton. I believe you're an insider in a three letter agency. Update this blog.

With things changing daily, I bet it's hard to get an article nailed down. But anything would be nice. We have a White Nationalist government taking shape in the US and an Executive Branch attempting, it appears, to gain total control of the govt. High-level Russian intelligence are disappearing or turning up dead, sanctions about to be lifted... and so on. Really interested to see your take.

A White Nationalist Govt consisting of Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, and a bunch of Jews from Goldman Sachs. You idiots have lost your damn minds. What a bunch of leftist nonsense. The Democrats are funded by Soros, a literal Nazi who helped send Jews to concentration camps and confiscate their lands, and you're worried about the tenuous and nearly non-existent connection that the globalist-controlled media narrative is pushing.

You awake from your sleep... it was all a dream.Russia, U.S., Saudi Arabia, Europe, Turkey, Syria ... what strange characters. Each fighting for something... the intricately interwoven details fade from your mind.

You inhale the fresh morning air, flowing in from the recently opened windows. The wall shows the details of the day: No priority alerts. 5 messages. Weather clear. Government infrastructure tests 98% passing (upward trend). Ample credit reserves. Comittee meeting at 2, university after. Drinks with the guys from the flying club later.

The chaos of the dream lastnight gives an extra sheen of well-oiled smoothness to the world before you. It had adventure, yes, and excitement. But great dread and uncertainty. Like a fast moving vehicle where everyone and no-one was the driver, careening around a cliffside road. You appreciate the solidity under your feet, thanking fate that we made it through those turbulent eras. Was that time a catharsis? Necessary for us, forcing us to discover a way through? A way to collectively steer the system (and by virtue everyone in it) with virtue, trust, integrity, stability...

You awake from the dream. Rubble. The smell of the dust fills your nose, which your body refuses to acclimitize to, protesting, warning you to leave. You know this isin't the worst of it. These seconds of blissful ignorance will pass, then you will remember the dead. Each name and face and touch and sound. Gone forever into the distant past. You wonder why you still get up, there is nothing for you anymore. Maybe duty is all you have left. You sit while your brain tries to find a way to bring them back, but you know it will never happen. All you can do is help those still left to make it through. You...

You awake from your sleep. Wikipedia, news, policy on the screen, 20 tabs deep. Stretch, scratch neckbeard, get undressed, shuffle off to bed. Same as it ever was, throughout time? Hard to tell. Maybe we just see more. A conflict between growing cynicism and idealistic pragmatism turns over within.

I miss you too grandma. Same as it ever was? Hard to tell. I can't bring them back. None of us can. The Dead? Beyond any artist's pay grade. The chaos of the dream last night where everyone and no one was the driver on a cliffside road?

Ha ha ha, no is grandma. Is Russia. We make many mistake with Japanese in Port Arthur. Having weak command. Disaster for motherland, for whole world. Now no weak command. Many strategies. Many active measures. Europe is old men in retirement home, son U.S. of A. no affording to visit. All thinking they cage bear. Bear hunt unseen in places old men fear. Russia must be defending entire west against new powers they make. (Is good for Russia too, no?) Old men talk, we pat on head.

me again, do you ever get in a warpath mood in your own personal life/world and the shitty people in it, work managers and asshole motorists for instance?, that's me recently, for all and sundry who care..hahahahaaa

I just wanted to say that your blog is what inspired me to pursue an MA in International Relations. If there's anything a $60,000 advanced degree taught me, its that geopolitics and hydrocarbons go together like Russians and track suits. American Shale is a 5 million barrel per day problem for petro-states (pour one out for Venezuela) and it's gotten so bad that the Saudis are willing to give Russian oil minister Alexander Novak a public tugjob at Davos in exchange for cooperation on sustained oil production cuts. China just became the world's largest crude importer (a distinction they view as more worrisome than "worst human trafficking offender") and will accelerate the build-out of their Navy's blue water capabilities to make sure the spice keeps flowing. Wonder what India, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, and the U.S. will think about that (hint: most microwaves have a "popcorn setting," make sure you familiarize yourself with yours).

Yup. Even without mentioning North Korea, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, or Libya, 2018 looks like it has the ingredients to make a truck bed of tannerite blush. I just wish Wartard was here to guide us through the mess.

LOL Public Tugjob. That's why I keep coming back every couple of months to read the comments. Every now and again someone has and interesting comment. That point on China and crude imports is a tricky issue.